Data cards, such as those containing Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices, may be used in various applications including networking applications.
Data cards may be provided in the form of a computer expansion card, and may include PCI-Express or PCIe compliant bus interface pluggable into the motherboard of a computer for power and data exchange. These boards may include a number of input and output connections, including edge connectors for interfacing with a host device and physical communication interfaces such as RJ45 Ethernet and connectors for Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP) transceivers for high speed serial data links to other nodes within a network (e.g. switch, router, server, etc.).
In some applications, it may be advantageous to use underutilized host interface connectors as serial data links.